answers@cp.tn.tudelft.nl ("Moderator *.answers")
Leo Breebaart -- [for the *.answers moderating team]
>I don't quite share your faith in the future. For one thing, the
>'easier' it becomes for people to maintain FAQlike documents, the more
>problems we are going to see with the (lack of) quality of those FAQs,
>not to mention the difficulties involved in keeping everything
>organized and findable for the readers.
There are a lot of misconceptions in these comments from my point of
view. First, the goal of making FAQs as easy as possible to write and
`publish' is a noble one. I do not in any way subscribe to the idea
that `unless you suffer your work is worthless'. Indeed there is some
correlation between jumping through hoops and improving work. But it is
not an archive maintainer's role, IMHO, to judge the `quality' of
FAQs-- at least this should be minimized with the goal of publishing
everything. Rather we should see cyberspace as a kind of information
marketplace, where the better FAQs naturally arise to the top and
people use them and ignore the poorly written ones.
Our job, then, as `the' people building and maintaining the
*infrastructure*, is to make the creation of these FAQs as trivial as
possible and to build up structures that allows readers to find the
best FAQs for themselves. I believe that in many ways hypertext is the
grand solution to this problem. Let people create their own hyperlinked
documents that point to the resources they find the most valuable, and
post these `guides to everything'. In many ways the Internet Resources
FAQs are exactly this.
Imagine that *everyone* could build up documents that point to their
favorite resources, and maintain them. Really, the distinction between
actual lists of information (the classic FAQ) and information that
points to other valuable information (resource pointers) is so blurred
as to become almost nonexistent today.
>WWW and gopher are *not* the
>solutions to everything. They don't scale very well.
oh really? why not? what are you talking about?
it is true that the protocols are extremely burdened by heavy use
lately. but this to me appears to prove that they have been so
immensely, successfully scaled that they have been taxed beyond all
belief. in particular, it seems to me that the whole design aspects of
Unix sockets do not anticipate huge loads. What happens when thousands
of people are trying to simultaneously get at port 70 of the same
server? I don't know much about what is going on `down there' but it
seems to me that new gopher protocols will handle loads much better.
And really, as FAQ maintainers, what do we care about this? the point
is that Gopher coupled with FAQs and hypertext is a fantastic resource
that is evolving as we speak. let's commit to it! let's be a part of it!
>Sure, you *could* redesign the system from scratch, and very probably
>find a much more efficient way to handle large amounts of FAQs, I
>won't deny that. But there is no need to panic, as yet.
I'm not doing any such thing--either proposing a redesign or saying NOW
IS THE TIME TO PANIC! (hee, hee, maybe I can get some great flames from that).
* * *
However, all of this does give me some ideas about proposals. First of
all, about a year ago I proposed a `ratings server' and J.Kamens and
many others here told me they hated the idea. But you guys still don't
get it. We need a way of maneuvering through these mountains of FAQs.
and the current Usenet tree hierarchy is *extremely* burdensome.
Ratings systems are one way that users can find the most popular FAQs.
I would like to propose another system here:
It appears to me that we have missed the basic distinction between
POINTERS TO INFO and ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS that FAQs represent. In the
former case, the FAQ is extremely burdensome in the current form. In
fact, the POINTERS TO INFO aspect of FAQs is almost completely tedious
to utilize in flat Ascii form but *immensely valuable and exhilarating*
to utilize in hypertext form. But *nothing* on rtfm.mit.edu supports
traversing `pointers to info' painlessly, unless you think that CD and
LS are `painless traversing'.
T.Fine points out that people like to *browse*, and that they are
*browsing* like crazy on his server. This whole idea of CDing and GET
is so @#$%^&* non ergonomic and nerdlike. Gopher is so popular because
it lets humans traverse and surf information with the mere glance of an
eye, swish of the wrist, and click of the button.
Therefore, I propose that we come up with a new classification of FAQs,
what might be called POINTER PAGES. a PP is nothing but a big hypertext
document that *anyone* can create that points to useful PPs `out
there'. But it is crucial that anyone can submit these PPs to existing
servers with a minimum of hassle. And the best PPs will become the most
popular, and people can create PPs to PPs ad infinitum.
But look how much hassle it is for anyone today to come up with their
own favorite list of services and put it on a server!? you have to
virtually be a gopher guru and own your own FTP site. The beauty of
FAQs is that *anyone* can get their valuable ideas and data onto a
*public* FTP site for the benefit of all humanity. Let's start doing
this with an emphasis on *hypertext* documents, and watch the world go crazy!
I would like to see a set of sites and operators who are committed to
allowing *anyone* to come up with their own PPs and put them on their
servers for the benefit of all humanity. Send me mail! I will keep a list!
Ladies and gentlemen, the FAQ system is a *publishing collective*. Our
current FAQ system, IMHO, is really only valuable to the extent it is
*uniformly accessable* on, essentially, *public server(s)* that
*anyone* can submit to with a *minimum of hassle*. Let's amplify the
best features of the system! rtfm.mit.edu being the only site for
*public submitted information* IMHO is an extreme bottleneck. We could
even set up a system whereby operators agree to archive documents on
certain subjects, and that a sort of `virtual moderation' takes place
whereby people with documents can be matched up with servers that will
support their writing.
Doesn't anyone see that PPs are really the salvation of the `noise
problem'? When anyone can build up their own PP that lists their own
most favorite services, and others can traverse their selections, that
is the `quality problem' and the `moderation problem' and the `signal
to noise problem' and the `ratings problem' solved *right there*!
Whoever comes up with a very painless PP server or network, I tell you
that you are doing perhaps the most important and valuable service to
all of cyberspace now and for the future. Whoever does this, I
volunteer to donate to you my time to build up a massive hierarchical
menu of *all* the FAQs in existence that organizes them in a very convenient way.
Okay, so I have tried to be a visionary some more, and open everyone's
eyes to the potential of their work here, using upsetting things like
lots of *emhasis* and CAPITAL LETTERS and I can't wait to see the
brilliant flames that lambaste me for irreverently tickling the status quo.
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